The present invention refers to a construction for the sealed unit of refrigerant fluid for a refrigeration appliance, to be particularly used in refrigeration appliances in which the evaporator, when in a refrigeration position, is mounted distant from both the compressor and the condenser.
The refrigeration appliances have a sealed unit comprising a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator and conducting tubes of refrigerant fluid connecting the compressor to the condenser, the latter to the evaporator, which is on its turn connected to the compressor. The sealed unit is usually mounted and sealed at the same manufacturing place of the cabinet into which it will be installed, in order to facilitate handling and transportation of said sealed units between their mounting station and the installation station of said cabinet.
In the constructions in which the assembly of the sealed unit occurs away from the cabinet manufacturing station, said sealed units have to be transported to said station, in order to be installed in said cabinets. With the conventional constructions, in order to transport the sealed units, each of them has to be packed in an appropriated package, involving all the components in the form they are found to be installed in a cabinet, i.e., in an operative position of refrigeration and in such a way as to protect said components.
Besides requiring a respective complex and bulky package, each sealed unit should have a structure capable of supporting, in a safe and stable way, the evaporator which, in the operative position of the sealed unit, stays away from the compressor-condenser assembly and is affixed to the components of said assembly only by means of the conducting tubes of refrigerant fluid.
The great volume of the package required for each sealed unit results in high cost, disproportionate to the volume which is effectively used for packaging the components, making infeasible to manufacture the cabinets in stations distant from that used for mounting the sealed units.
This problem is not so critical when the sealed units have their components closer to each other, but it is very relevant when the distance between the evaporator and the compressor-condenser assembly is large, as it occurs in the vertical refrigeration appliances.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a construction for the sealed unit of refrigerant fluid for a refrigeration appliance of reduced cost, which permits easy transportation and handling, and which may be mounted in a station distant from the manufacturing station of the refrigeration cabinet into which it will be installed. These and other objectives are achieved by a sealed unit of refrigerant fluid for a refrigeration appliance, comprising component parts defined by a hermetic compressor, a condenser, an evaporator and conducting tubes of refrigerant fluid connecting the hermetic compressor to the condenser, the latter to the evaporator by means of an expanding device, and connecting the evaporator to the hermetic compressor, at least one of the parts consisting of the condenser and the evaporator being defined as a prismatic body which is at least partially tubular, said component parts of the sealed unit being relatively displaced from an inoperative position of transportation, in which the hermetic compressor and the conducting tubes remain contained within a contour defined by the contour of at least one of the parts defined by the condenser and the evaporator, to a mounting operative position in a refrigeration appliance, in which the evaporator and part of the extension of the conducting tubes connecting said evaporator to the hermetic compressor and to the condenser are displaced to a position external to said contour.